Wed Sep 12, 2012 at 09:27:25 AM EDT

Yikes! From MIRS...

House Speaker Jase BOLGER's (R-Marshall) lead over Scotts Democrat Bill FARMER in the 63rd District is 51.5 to 48.5 percent, within the margin of error, according to a MIRS/Practical Political Consulting (PPC) poll of 580 likely 63rd House District voters.

The survey found Republican presidential nominee Mitt ROMNEY beating President Barack OBAMA 49 to 44 percent in Bolger's district, made up of pieces of Calhoun and Kalamazoo counties. Seven percent chose "other."

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Pete HOEKSTRA is up 46 to 45 percent over incumbent U.S. Sen. Debbie STABENOW (D-Lansing) in this district. Nine percent chose "other."

PPC's Mark GREBNER said Bolger's 3-percentage-point lead shows him "the state House race appears to be very close" and Bolger's lead is "far from being statistically significant."

For some reason, Ari Adler says this is actually good news. The only real consolation is that his approval ratings are higher than those of Roy Schmidt, which someone told me as of last polling were in single digits. If you read the entire report, you'll note that Bolger is popular only among people who are die-hard Republicans. In every other category, the Democrat leads.

This would tend to run contrary to all the "Jase Bolger is as strong as ever" bullshit that Jase Bolger has been telling everyone since his role in an election fraud scheme was made public earlier this summer. Maybe Dave Agema was onto something when he said that if Bolger's constituents were unhappy with his performance they could fire him. Of course, if he wins re-election -- he shouldn't, but he probably will -- he's still got another group of constituents who will probably happily re-elect him to another office, House Speaker.

I look forward to another installment from the state's "adult" media lecturing the rest of us about what's broken is the citizens' initiative process.

I'm actually rather shocked at the vote. I did't expect it to be so close, even though everyone knows that it should be. The presidential and congressional numbers are even shocking. Bolger could single-handedly help flip some close congressional races, while here I was thinking that this only had implications for us taking back the state house.